Stephanie Selesnick, International Trade Information, Inc. One of my favorite things about attending the UFI Regional Conferences is learning about other cultures and visiting countries for the first time. Here are a few things we learned last week about Japan at the UFI Asia-Pacific Conference - and how you may incorporate them into your exhibitions: 1. Signage. Japan is pretty easy to travel around! Having bilingual signage – Japanese and English - enabled us to easily travel around the co [...]

Matthias (Tesi) Baur, Founder and Consultant, MBB-Consulting Group. Financial reward may be the driving force for most businesses, but it is not the only way to measure business success. Our business environment is not the same as it was 20, 10, or even five years ago and the way in which we measure performance should reflect this. Companies assessing their performance by measuring outdated Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) run the risk of performing within an outdated framework. As the basic [...]

2018 UFI NGL Grantee - Lilian Burgardt, Head of Digital Products - Informa Brazil. Meet Lilian Burgardt, Head of Digital Products - Informa Brazil, one of the four recipients of the UFI Next Generation Leadership Grant (NGL). Lilian Burgardt, one of the four recipients of the 2018 NGL Grant, and I had a chance to catch up earlier this month. The UFI NGL Grant is awarded to future leaders of the exhibition industry for exceptional initiative in driving change and innovation within their differe [...]

Kerrin MacPhie, VisitBritain. While the UK is home to many of the world’s leading organisers, its event business at home is largely a domestic market. But in light of the country’s upcoming departure from the European Union, the role of exhibitions at home has become increasingly important. Take for example the Farnborough International Airshow, which runs this week – 37 weeks before the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union. “This is an incredibly exciting time for aerospace. Not only [...]

Global exhibition industry figureheads have come together to form an investment and strategic advisory council to help entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses in the exhibition industry. The Events Investment Club (working title) is the brainchild of former Reed Exhibitions chairman Mike Rusbridge and former Reed Exhibitions’ commercial director Nick Forster, who have pooled resources with a dozen leading lights from the international exhibition industry. The group, which held its first official [...]

A huge deal has taken shape in the exhibition industry as Informa has concluded talks to acquire UBM. According to a Reuters report, both companies have agreed a deal on Wednesday which would see Informa acquiring UBM for 5.2 billion US Dollar in cash and stock. Informa now has until February 13 to make a firm offer. If the deal goes through, it will be by far the largest M&A activity ever seen in the exhibition industry. Informa's Chief Executive Stephen A. Carter will be chief executive of [...]

This is traditionally the time of the year for reviewing the developments over the past months and taking stock. At UFI, we did this in early November, during the General Assembly at our Global Congress in Johannesburg. Thank you again for all the feedback you gave the UFI team on our ongoing initiatives, activities and projects. As in previous years, we also used the time around the Congress to identify the core themes that the UFI team feels will impact the global exhibition industry in 2018. [...]

Interview with UFI Global Congress 2017’s Keynote Speaker, Johan Reyneke, Founder & Owner of Reyneke Wines in South Africa (Part 2 of 2). Stephanie Selesnick: Please share your Cornerstone program encouraging home ownership and education for the winery’s workers and their families. How did it come about and where do you see it being in five years from now? Johan Reyneke: This ties in with biodynamics (part 1). We have to look after nature, profitability and people (who comprise the 3rd leg o [...]

Blogger: Mr. Talun Theng, President, Thai Exhibition Association (TEA) It was wonderful to witness TCEB's newly-appointed president Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya officially commence his tenure by highlighting the impact international business events have on domestic growth and stability. It is expected that in the 2017 budget year, there will be a total of 27.1 million MICE travellers in Thailand, generating revenue of approximately 4.4 billion USD. And it is the role of those international vis [...]

Posted by Barry Siskind UFI’s Community Manager Much has been written about the “attendee experience,” recently I read a blog post on the My Industry tracker recently that described it as the “attendee journey.” Blogger Robin Gallegos describes the attendee journey as a careful examination of each step the attendees takes as they interact with an event or exhibition. That’s everything from registration to the follow-up surveys. The first step is registration and according to the author if that [...]